Page 119 of The Prince's Mage

“I didn’t know the implication of taking them from her until after I already had.” Gavril couldn’t help his voice dipping lower. “I know you think we’re all without any honor, but Marcella will tell you herself I have never impugned hers.”

Konstantin just eyed the gold lilies. “You’ve kept them like a trophy. And of course she will; she is completely taken with you. You are all she has talked about and worried about for the last few days. Her perception of events can only be skewed in your favor, no matter how ugly the truth.”

“I kept them in the hopes one day I would offer them and she would accept them,” he ground out, humiliated he had to be admitting any of this to the man who married a demon.

What would Konstantin know of love?

Konstantin lowered the lilies and the half-formed rune to raise an eyebrow. “But you already bound her to you by your people’s bastardization of marriage. Why would you need anything more?”

“I married her according to my people’s tradition to protect her. I wanted to marry her according to your people’s tradition because I love her.”

Konstantin’s eyes widened. “Protect her from your own people?”

“Yes, I did it in an attempt to protect her life after I discovered she wasn’t Hypatia and I thought we could achieve peace from it.” Gavril scoffed. “I don’t know why you or Hypatia are pretending to care about her now. She would be but an afterthought if I hadn’t chosen to save her life even after discovering how little she was worth to you. You sent her to die, but you object to the lengths I went to in order to protect her?”

“I care about all of my people.” Konstantin’s voice darkened. “As far as I’m concerned, Clan Desero’s members are now my people. As for Hypatia? Where else do you think her fury with you comes from? She is fond of Marcella simply by the virtue of her appearance. I find it a wholly inadequate reason and completely wrapped up in Hypatia’s vanity, but to say she doesn’t care about Marcella at all would not be accurate.”

“And yet she cared about Marcella enough to replicate a scar on her skin, so desperate to preserve her life she must have forgotten all about that fondness,” Gavril sneered. “Guess you’re a lucky man, Konstantin—Hypatia was so determined to marry you she would scar and leave for dead someone she claims she is fond of.”

Antagonizing him might not be the smartest move, but if they were going to continue to degrade his relationship with Marcella, he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself.

If they were determined to believe he was a monster who had been abusing and manipulating Marcella this whole time, he could not change their minds. Especially when they would not confront their own abuse and how it had left a lifetime of scars on her deeper than any of her physical ones.

Konstantin’s jaw clenched and he crossed his arms. “An Inimicus cannot understand what it means to be burdened with Sight like Hypatia is. Or what the consequences of that knowledge entail. We all make sacrifices for our people in this war.”

If the sacrifice was Marcella’s life or him marrying Hypatia, it wasn’t clear.

“What do you want from me? If you are already decided upon not believing a word I say and thinking me the lowest of men, what is the point?” Gavril snapped.

Konstantin sighed. “Did it work?”

“What?”

“Your claim is you bound yourself to Marcella to protect her. There is but one thing I can think of that you would have to protect her from… Those horrific tables.” Gavril’s breath caught in the back of his throat at Konstantin’s words. The man’s face twisted in a disgusted expression before he whispered, “Did it work?”

Some secrets Gavril had to keep. Some lies he was tired of telling.

“No.” Gavril swallowed thickly. “That failure will never stop haunting me.”

Konstantin looked back down at the lilies. “And yet you have reason to believe she would accept these?”

“Yes.”

“She says she loves you… if all this is true…” Konstantin stepped closer and held out the set of lilies to him. “Maybe there is hope yet for us all.”

Konstantin believed him?

Gavril took the lilies back and slipped them into his pocket.

“I suspected that soldier wasn’t entirely honest. I’m personally of the opinion interrogations that are more torture don’t tend to actually encourage true honesty, just whatever will make the pain stop, or the pain wasn’t going to break them in the first place.” Konstantin gestured to the rope on the ground. “The sooner you’re restrained, the sooner I can get back to my wife to try to speak sense to her and reassure yours. And maybe we can have real peace for the first time in our lifetimes.”

As Konstantin retied the rope, binding Gavril back to the post, Gavril couldn’t say he liked the man who was saddled with the Desero demon, but any ally on the path to peace was one he couldn’t afford to lose.

Chapter44

MARCELLA

Marcella would have rather stayed in Gavril’s arms, but this was her chance to plead her case and clear Gavril’s name. If she was particularly convincing, maybe she could get him moved into a tent.

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